Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (38 page)

“Now is not the time for this.”

Like almost everyone around Chelsea, Davenport was struggling to find her footing. During the school vacation in late February she embraced the chance to flee the area. In a matter of weeks, she’d been

worn down by events and, like many, blamed the “invasion of the media” for making the tragedy of the Zantop murders worse. “The press took over the community.” Davenport was relieved that she and her husband had a trip planned to visit relatives near Washington,

D.C. “Hate is probably too strong a word to describe my feeling toward the media,” she said later. “But it had lost its validity with me. I was having this feeling, why can’t they go away? Why are they doing this? Why is this so important?” Her first and only concern was “to make sure the children felt safe and supported, and it was hard for kids to get to school without going past the press.”

In Washington, D.C., she and her husband filled their days with vis-its to the Kennedy Center, museums, and historic sites, but when someone suggested the Freedom Forum, the school principal hesitated. The center, devoted to the nation’s press, was not on her list of things to do. “The last thing I wanted to do was see anything to do with the media.” She ended up going anyway, and was immediately glad she did. “They have a sense there—the staff—that this is not just a museum but a statement of values and of the importance of a free press.” She was mesmerized by an exhibit of Pulitzer Prize–winning photographs, particularly a portrait of a black family, sharecroppers who had been ousted from their homestead after the father tried to register to vote. Only a free press, thought Davenport, could capture so dramatically the penalty a race of people paid for trying to vote. “I realized once again how hard people fight for rights, and a free press is part of that effort. I saw the importance of the press bearing witness.” The getaway gave her a chance to take a deep breath, and the Freedom Forum visit, she said later, “became a turning point for me to getting back and having a bet-ter balance in my view of the press.” Not that she became a fan. Returning home, she despaired at finding thirty-six messages from reporters on her answering machine. But she’d gained insight into the “struggle trying to balance the rest of the world needing to know and the people here going through shock and grieving and needing to be left alone.”

It seemed any Chelsean who went away on vacation had a story to tell. People everywhere seemed to know about the case and wanted to

talk about it. “You say ‘Chelsea’ and people go, ‘Oh, that’s where those kids are from,’ ” said high school sophomore Rob Olsen. Returning from their annual trip to Florida, Jack and Annette Johnson and their son Brad said talk about the murder was constant, to the point where they considered hiding the fact they were Vermonters. While on vacation the year before, the Johnsons had confronted teasing patter about Vermont’s new civil-union law permitting same-sex marriages. The bad jokes about homosexual couples migrating to Vermont were reason enough at the time to avoid mentioning where they were from, but the noisy talk about the murders was even worse.

“It’s part of the town now,” Annette Johnson said repeatedly.

During late winter and spring, the case had to be acknowledged at public meetings as an unscripted item on the agenda. The murders came up right away at the annual town meeting in early March, before the wrangling over property taxes and a new school budget could begin in earnest as it did every year. Before the two hundred or so people assembled, Stephen Gould, the school board chairman, offered the board’s support to the Tullochs, the Parkers, and to the Zantops’ daughters. “It’s still going to be a rough road ahead,” Gould said about life in their hometown. “We don’t know what news we’re going to hear in the future.” But whatever may come, he said, “We have our strength to see our way through this.”

Others found a sense of purpose in applying for an education grant from the 21st Century Fund to build the long talked-about teen center. Still, Pomerantz seemed correct about the tug of daily life beginning to reassert itself by the time the third meeting was scheduled for April 12. “Slow arrivals,” he noted in his journal about a gathering the media didn’t even know about. “Don’t need the gym, music room will be OK. Good acoustics anyway.” Present at the meeting was an attorney who answered questions for an hour about criminal procedure in New Hampshire. “Glad we had him,” noted Pomerantz. “At least we all know what happens next.” The next hour was spent discussing whether to meet again. “Do we need another meeting?” Pomerantz

wrote afterward. “Guess not.”

C
ome spring, visitors passing through Chelsea on their way to Vermont tourist sites wouldn’t detect anything amiss—outwardly. The big-city

television satellite trucks, a mainstay in town for weeks, were long gone. Instead, tourists might see Doug Lyford chugging along Main Street aboard one of his John Deere tractors en route to yet another field that he and his partner were tending. Over at the school, the varsity baseball team’s afternoon games were drawing as many as eighty parents and kids. The crowd sat on blankets and folding beach chairs on the steep, grassy hill that overlooked the playing field. The team featured a lineup that included many of Robert and Jim’s friends: Kip Battey in left field, Zack Courts in center field, Brad Johnson in right, and Tyler Vermette at second base. The boys had had a rough start, winning just two games against six losses by early May. But in a May 22 game against a visiting team from Bethel, the Chelsea Red Devils exploded for seven runs in the first inning on its way to a 13–4 win. Brad Johnson pounded a sin-gle to center field to drive in one of the runs during the big inning. Elsewhere in town the talk was about maple sugaring—a season that for many hadn’t gone as well as past ones. The weather conditions hadn’t been consistently favorable to get the clear, sweet sap running freely from tree trunks into the taps. Ideal sugar weather meant freezing-cold temperatures at night followed by sunny, warm days. The sixteen inches of snow that fell on April Fool’s Day was no laughing matter to the many who then had to shovel out their taps and sugarhouses. Sugaring was a hobby for some, while loggers like Jack Johnson and his family did it because hauling logs was impossible during the March mud season. “Sugaring keeps us busy,” Jack said. The family’s sugarhouse, where sap was slowly boiled into maple syrup, was operated around the clock, mainly by his two eldest sons. Conditions notwithstanding, Chelseans such as Town Clerk Diane Mattoon and her husband had a pretty good year with their 511 taps, and roadside signs appeared at farms and homes announcing the sale of this year’s yield.

With the Chelsea Town Hall closed on Fridays, Diane Mattoon began spending part of her day off in the woods near her land, picking

fiddleheads in the damp beds along brooks and streams. Growing wild, the bright-green fern has a tightly coiled tip that resembles the top of a violin. Chefs and restaurateurs around New England covet them for their earthy flavor and as an exotic addition to spring-season menus. But Mattoon, who was fifty-nine, had her own family recipes and traditions: “You pick ’em and pickle ’em.” She seasoned them in vinegar, dill, red pepper flakes, and garlic. “You can serve them with Saltines or

eat them just like a pickle. Or you can saute´

them in butter and garlic.” She and a friend filled a five-gallon pail one outing. To Chelseans like Mattoon, if it wasn’t fiddleheads, it was always something. By early June, Mattoon was out in the woods again, this time gathering mushrooms. Mattoon liked to freeze morel mushrooms and then, come winter, create a rich sauce using brandy and heavy cream that she’d pour over homemade bread fried on both sides. “It’s very rich— and it’s out of this world,” she’d say. Then there was the weekend in mid-May when the civic club from Tunbridge, the next town south of Chelsea, took over the auditorium in Chelsea’s Town Hall to stage its 49th Annual Minstrel Show. Inside the songs rang out—selections included “Happy Days Are Here Again” and “Grand Old Flag”—and Mattoon helped out at the door selling tickets.

But it was a surface calm, fragile at best. Worry quickly spread, for example, on the heels of a mysterious incident in the village early one evening in May. Few knew exactly what happened, but the talk was about a car pulling into town carrying a couple of out-of-towners. The two strangers were looking for someone, and a foot chase and a minor altercation ensued. The county sheriff ’s office got involved and questioned a few teens, but nothing came of it. Even so, eleven parents and teachers showed up at the regular June 5 selectmen’s meeting. Principal Pat Davenport attended, as did Diane Mattoon. “People were jumpy, especially since what we’ve been through,” Mattoon said later. “The feeling was to not brush stuff off, as we maybe had done in the past, but to look harder at the seemingly little things to make sure it’s not a sign of something worse.” They discussed paying for more patrols in town by the county sheriff ’s department. The selectmen’s report for

a meeting usually devoted to such mundane matters as road repairs noted, “Because there is a sense of panic in town now, more presence at this time might help with citizens’ peace of mind.”

G
one was the stillness of Chelsea’s slow time. It wasn’t as if there was no other news to concern Vermonters. Federal agents descended

on a farm in East Warren in March to seize 234 sheep believed to be infected with a variant of mad cow disease. But no matter what else briefly claimed the spotlight, the Zantop case wouldn’t go away.

There was the news that a grand jury was meeting in New Hampshire, and that subpoenas had gone to Chelsea kids including Zack Courts and Gaelen McKee. The boys were questioned under oath about the times they’d entered the two houses with Robert and Jim when no one was home, the so-called B&Es. Bigger still was word that investigators and prosecutors were going to question John and Joan Parker and Mike, Diane, and Kienan Tulloch on March 16.

The Tullochs were interviewed at the Hanover Police Department, the Parkers in the more comfortable confines of a private attorney’s office in White River Junction. Both families had attorneys present, as they faced a lineup of interrogators that included prosecutors Kelly Ayotte and Mike Delaney and the key New Hampshire State Police investigators: Chuck West, Frank Moran, Robert Bruno, and Russ Hubbard.

The separate questioning of each member of the Parker and Tulloch families followed a similar format: What was the family’s connection to Hanover? What was their knowledge of the Zantops? What about Robert and Jim’s connection to Hanover? To the Zantops? There were other questions about the boys, their friendship, and their actions from the date of the murder on January 27 and after, but the principal questions were aimed at trying to make headway on the matter that bedeviled investigators and the public: motive. Why had Robert and Jim gone to 115 Trescott Road, and exactly what happened inside the house?

Eight hours later investigators had little to show for the effort. None of the family members provided anything tangible to explain how or why Robert and Jim ended up in Hanover. John Parker told West and Moran that except for a new foundation he’d just poured he’d never built homes in the Hanover area. Parker said he had “no feeling, I mean no information” about Jim’s views on Dartmouth College. Joan Parker said she’d never worked as a racquetball instructor in Hanover. West asked her, “What connection did Jimmy have with Hanover?” Joan replied, “Nothing that I know of.” Covering all possible angles, investigators asked each parent about the rumors of an affair involving one of the parents and either Half or Susanne Zantop. “I think it’s crazy,” John Parker said. He’d never met either Zantop. Joan Parker said the same.

“Were you involved in any kind of relationship with Half Zantop?” Frank Moran asked Joan Parker.

“No,” she said. “Or his wife?” “No.”

“Do you know of anyone who had been involved in a relationship with Half or Susanne Zantop?”

“No. I’ve never heard of them before.”

Seeming frustrated, Chuck West at one point tangled with John Parker, pushing the father on whether he would lie to protect Jim. “Are you more comfortable protecting your son than answering our questions truthfully?” the detective asked.

“That’s a tough question,” Parker replied. “They’re both important to me.” Seconds later, he insisted, “I won’t say things that will protect my son by not telling the truth.”

The sessions with the Tullochs were similarly frustrating for authorities. Diane Tulloch said she knew of no possible connection between Robert and either Hanover or the Zantops. “I was not even aware that Robert was into this area. This is not an area we usually go to.” Mike Tulloch echoed his wife. “Our family, generally speaking, is not oriented toward Hanover,” he said. “Robert’s involvement in

Hanover with the Zantops, I, I, have no knowledge of it.” Questioned about extramarital affairs with the victims, Tulloch dismissed the rumors. “When we first heard about it, [Diane] laughed, um, so it’s kind of a laughable situation from our point of view.”

Of the four parents, the reclusive Mike Tulloch was clearly the most uncomfortable. His voice was frequently inaudible and his responses were often tortured in their syntax and littered with “ums” and “uhs.” His interview was also remarkable for its detachment. There was a distance in the way he talked about Robert, as though he had only secondhand knowledge of his son’s life. He couldn’t say whether Robert and Christiana had a close relationship. “Um, if they were, I, I, I, I didn’t see it. Uh, it, it seemed more casual to me.” Mike was only vaguely aware of Robert’s wanderlust in the past year. “I think it was France at one time, and then it was Australia. Um, France was with Jimmy. Australia, as I remember, was just Robert. I could be wrong about that, though.” Mike said he thought Robert at one point had sought a grant through his school to help pay for travel, but the father didn’t know for sure if Robert ever applied.

“He didn’t get the grant apparently,” was all he could say about the outcome.

Then came a moment when Mike didn’t recognize the inside of his own house in a photograph taken during the police search in February. The photograph showed an interior wall and a doorjamb on which markings had been carved. Investigators, stymied in their quest to understand the killings, wondered if there might be some sort of clue or hidden meaning to the delta-shaped pattern. Neither Diane Tulloch nor her son Kienan thought so. Mike Tulloch said he’d never seen the markings before.